Hajime Tanabe
田辺 元
Born(1885-02-03)February 3, 1885
Tokyo, Japan
DiedApril 29, 1962(1962-04-29) (aged 77)
Karuizawa, Japan
Nationality Japanese
Alma materTokyo Imperial University
Notable work‘The Logic of Species and the World Schema’, Philosophy as a Way to Repentance (Metanoetics)
AwardsOrder of Culture
Era20th-century philosophy
RegionJapanese philosophy
School
Institutions
Main interests
Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Mathematics, Philosophy of Physics, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Religion
Notable ideas
The Kyoto School of Philosophy
at Kyoto University
Topics
Individuals
Historical background

Hajime Tanabe (田辺 元, Tanabe Hajime, February 3, 1885 – April 29, 1962) was a Japanese philosopher of science, particularly of mathematics and physics. His work brought together elements of Buddhism, scientific thought, Western philosophy, Christianity, and Marxism.[1] In the postwar years, Tanabe coined the concept of metanoetics, proposing that the limits of speculative philosophy and reason must be surpassed by metanoia.

Tanabe was a key member of what has become known in the West as the Kyoto School, alongside philosophers Kitaro Nishida (also Tanabe's teacher)[2] and Keiji Nishitani.[3][4] He taught at Tōhoku Imperial University beginning in 1913 and later at Kyōto Imperial University, and studied at the universities of Berlin, Leipzig, and Freiburg in the 1920s under figures such as Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger.[1] In 1947 he became a member of the Japan Academy, and in 1950 he received the Order of Cultural Merit.

Biography

Tanabe was born on February 3, 1885, in Tokyo to a household devoted to education. His father, the principal of Kaisei Academy, was a scholar of Confucius, whose teachings may have influenced Tanabe's philosophical and religious thought.[5] Tanabe enrolled at Tokyo Imperial University, first as a mathematics student before moving to literature and philosophy.[6] After graduation, he worked as a lecturer at Tohoku University and taught English at Kaisei Academy.[7]

In 1916, Tanabe translated Henri Poincaré’s La Valeur de la science.[8] In 1918, he received his doctorate from Kyoto Imperial University with a dissertation entitled ‘Investigations into the Philosophy of Mathematics’ (predecessor to the 1925 book with the same title).

In 1919, at Nishida’s invitation, Tanabe accepted the position of associate professor at Kyoto Imperial University. From 1922 to 23, he studied in Germany — first, under Alois Riehl at the University of Berlin and then under Edmund Husserl at the University of Freiburg. At Freiburg, he befriended the young Martin Heidegger and Oskar Becker.[9] One can recognise the influence of these philosophers in Tanabe.

In September 1923, soon after the Great Kantō Earthquake, the Home Ministry ordered his return, so Tanabe used the little time he had left — about a couple of months — to visit London and Paris, before boarding his return ship at Marseille. He arrived back in Japan in 1924.[10]

In 1928, Tanabe translated Max Planck’s 1908 lecture, ‘Die Einheit des physikalischen Weltbildes’ for the Philosophical Essays [哲学論叢] translation series, which he co-edited, for his publisher Iwanami Shoten.[11] The same series published translations of essays by Bruno Bauch, Adolf Reinach, Wilhelm Windelband, Siegfried Marck, Max Planck, Franz Brentano, Paul Natorp, Nicolai Hartmann, Kazimierz Twardowski, Ernst Cassirer, Hermann Cohen, Emil Lask, Victor Brochard, Ernst Troeltsch, Theodor Lipps, Konrad Fiedler, Wincenty Lutosławski, Sergei Rubinstein, Hermann Bonitz, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, Martin Grabmann, Heinrich Rickert, Alexius Meinong, Karl von Prantl and Wilhelm Dilthey (the series ended before the planned translations of Christoph von Sigwart, Carl Stumpf, Edmund Husserl, Clemens Baeumker, Josiah Royce and Hermann Ebbinghaus were published).

After Nishida's retirement from teaching in 1928, Tanabe succeeded him. Though they began as friends, and shared several philosophical concepts such as the absolute nothing [絶対無], Tanabe became increasingly critical of Nishida's philosophy. Many of Tanabe's writings after Nishida left the university obliquely attacked the latter's philosophy.

In 1935, Tanabe published his essay ‘The Logic of Species and the World Schema’ wherein he formulated his own ‘logic of species’ for which he became known.

During the Japanese expansion and war effort, Tanabe worked with Nishida and others to maintain the right for free academic expression. Though he criticized the Nazi-inspired letter of Heidegger,[clarification needed] Tanabe himself was caught up in the Japanese war effort, and his letters to students going off to war exhibit many of the same terms and ideology used by the reigning military powers. Even more damning are his essays written in defense of Japanese racial and state superiority, exploiting his theory of the Logic of Species to herald and abet the militaristic ideology.[12] This proposed dialectic argued that every contradictory opposition is to be mediated by a third term in the same manner a species mediates a genus and an individual.[13]

During the war years, however, Tanabe wrote and published little, perhaps reflecting the moral turmoil that he attests to in his monumental post-war work, Philosophy as Metanoetics. The work is framed as a confession of repentance (metanoia) for his support of the war effort. It purports to show a philosophical way to overcome philosophy itself, which suggests[citation needed] that traditional Western thought contained seeds of the ideological framework that led to World War II.

His activities, and the actions of Japan as a whole, haunted Tanabe for the rest of his life. In 1951, he writes:

But as the tensions of World War II grew ever more fierce and with it the regulation of thinking, weak-willed as I was, I found myself unable to resist and could not but yield to some degree to the prevalent mood, which is a shame deeper than I can bear. The already blind militarism had led so many of our graduates precipitously to the battlefields; among the fallen were more than ten from philosophy, for which I feel the height of responsibility and remorse. I can only lower my head and earnestly lament my sin.[14]

He lived for another eleven years after writing these words, dying in 1962 in Kita-Karuizawa, Japan.

Thought

As James Heisig and others note, Tanabe and other members of the Kyoto School accepted the Western philosophical tradition stemming from the Greeks. This tradition attempts to explain the meaning of human experience in rational terms. This sets them apart from other Eastern writers who, though thinking about what life means and how best to live a good life, spoke in religious terms.

Although the Kyoto School used Western philosophical terminology and rational exploration, they made these items serve the purpose of presenting a unique vision of reality from within their cultural heritage. Specifically, they could enrich a discussion of the ultimate nature of reality using the experience and thought of various forms of Buddhism like Zen and Pure Land, but embedded in an analysis that calls upon conceptual tools forged and honed in western philosophy by thinkers ranging from Plato to Descartes to Heidegger.[15]

Tanabe's own contribution to this dialog between Eastern and Western philosophy ultimately sets him apart from the other members of the Kyoto School. His radical critique of philosophical reason and method, while stemming from Immanuel Kant and Søren Kierkegaard, which emerges in his work Philosophy as Metanoetics, easily sets him as a major thinker with a unique position on perennial philosophical questions. Some commentators, for example, suggest that Tanabe's work in metanoetics is a forerunner of deconstruction.[16]

Tanabe engaged with philosophers of Continental philosophy, especially Existentialism. His work is often a dialogue with philosophers like Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Heidegger. Because of his engaging these thinkers, especially the first two, Tanabe's thought has been characterized as Existentialist, though Makoto Ozaki writes that Tanabe preferred the terms "existentialist philosophy of history", "historical existentialism", or "existential metaphysics of history".[17] In his masterpiece, Philosophy as Metanoetics, Tanabe characterized his work as "philosophy that is not a philosophy", foreshadowing various approaches to thinking by deconstructionists.

Like other Existentialists, Tanabe emphasizes the importance of philosophy as being meaning; that is, what humans think about and desire is finding a meaning to life and death. In company with the other members of the Kyoto School, Tanabe believed that the foremost problem facing humans in the modern world is the lack of meaning and its consequent Nihilism. Jean-Paul Sartre, following Kierkegaard in his Concept of Anxiety, was keen to characterize this as Nothingness. Heidegger, as well, appropriated the notion of Nothingness in his later writings.

The Kyoto School philosophers believed that their contribution to this discussion of Nihilism centered on the Buddhist-inspired concept of nothingness, aligned with its correlate Sunyata. Tanabe and Nishida attempted to distinguish their philosophical use of this concept, however, by calling it Absolute Nothingness. This term differentiates it from the Buddhist religious concept of nothingness, as well as underlines the historical aspects of human existence that they believed Buddhism does not capture.

Tanabe disagreed with Nishida and Nishitani on the meaning of Absolute Nothingness, emphasizing the practical, historical aspect over what he termed the latter's intuitionism. By this, Tanabe hoped to emphasize the working of Nothingness in time, as opposed to an eternal Now. He also wished to center the human experience in action rather than contemplation, since he thought that action embodies a concern for ethics whereas contemplation ultimately disregards this, resulting in a form of Monism, after the mold of Plotinus and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.[18] That is, echoing Kierkegaard's undermining in Philosophical Fragments of systematic philosophy from Plato to Baruch Spinoza to Hegel,[19] Tanabe questions whether there is an aboriginal condition of preexisting awareness that can or must be regained to attain enlightenment.[20]

Tanabe's insistence on this point is not simply philosophical and instead points again to his insistence that the proper mode of human being is action, especially ethics. However, he is critical of the notion of a pre-existing condition of enlightenment because he accepts the Kantian notion of radical evil, wherein humans exhibit an ineluctable propensity to act against their own desires for the good and instead perpetrate evil.[21][22]

Tanabe's "Demonstration of Christianity" presents religion as a cultural entity in tension with the existential meaning that religion plays in individual lives. Tanabe uses the terms genus to represent the universality of form that all entities strive for, contrasting them with the stable, though ossified form they can become as species as social systems.

Tanabe contraposes Christianity and Christ, represented here as the opposition between Paul and Jesus. Jesus, in Tanabe's terms, is a historical being who manifests the action of Absolute Nothingness, or God understood in non-theistic terms. God is beyond all conceptuality and human thinking, which can only occur in terms of self-identity, or Being. God becomes, as manifested in human actions, though God can never be reduced to being, or self-identity.

For Tanabe, humans have the potential to realize compassionate divinity, Nothingness, through continual death and resurrection, by way of seeing their nothingness. Tanabe believes that the Christian Incarnation narrative is important for explaining the nature of reality, since he believed Absolute Nothingness becoming human exemplifies the true nature of the divine, as well as exemplar to realization of human being in relationship to divinity. Jesus signifies this process in a most pure form, thereby setting an example for others to follow.

Ultimately, Tanabe chooses philosophy over religion, since the latter tends toward socialization and domestication of the original impulse of the religious action. Philosophy, understood as metanoetics, always remains open to questions and the possibility self-delusion in the form of radical evil. Therefore, Tanabe's statement is a philosophy of religion.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Monographs

Essays

CW1: Early Essays [初期論文集]

A reworking of Tanabe’s graduation essay from 1908.
On the descriptivism of Kirchhoff and Mach.
Sōda replied with his ‘Awaiting Further Clarification from Dr. Tanabe regarding the Logic of Individual Causality’ [個別的因果律に関して更に田辺博士の教えをまつ] (Tetsugaku Kenkyū [哲学研究], No. 32, November 1918).
On Kant’s notion of »Bewußtsein überhaupt«.

CW4: Early to Middle Essays [初期・中期論文集]

Intuitive knowledge as in Spinoza’s scientia intuitiva.
Tanabe’s famous critique of Nishida’s philosophy.

CW5: Middle Essays [中期論文集]

CW6: Essays on the Logic of Species, Vol. 1 [「種の論理」論文集I]

CW7: Essays on the Logic of Species, Vol. 2 [「種の論理」論文集II]

CW8: Occasional Essays [時事論文集]

CW10

CW12: Essays in the Philosophy of Science [科学哲学論文集] (1948-50)

CW13: Late and Posthumous Essays [後期論文集・遺稿]

CW14: Miscellanea, Vol. 1 [雑纂 上]

The essay in question is Fritz Medicus, ‘Bemerkungen zum Problem der Existenz mathematischer Gegenstände’, Kant-Studien, 19:1-19.

CW15: Miscellanea, Vol. 2 [雑纂 下]

Archimedes’ axiom [アルキメデス公理]; Körper α [アルファ体]; Analysis situs [位置解析]; Ether [エーテル]; Energetic view of nature [エネルギー観]; Principle of conservation of energy [エネルギー保存則]; Action at a distance [遠隔作用]; Entropy [エントロピー]; Extensive quality [外延量]; Analysis [解析]; Analytical geometry [解析幾何学]; Critique of science [科学批判]; Reversible phenomenon [可逆現象]; Function [関数]; Mechanical view of nature [機械観]; Geometry [幾何学]; Pseudo-spherical space [擬球面空間]; Description [記述]; Descriptive school [記述学派]; Cardinal number [基数]; Series [級数]; Spherical space [球面空間]; Limit [極限]; Grenzpunkt [極限点]; Method of limit [極限法]; Grenzelement [極限要素]; Ortzeit [局所時]; Imaginary number [虚数]; Modern geometry [近世幾何学]; Space curvature [空間曲率]; Contingency [偶然]; Group [群]; Principle of permanence of formal laws [形式不易の原理]; Metrical geometry [計量幾何学]; Atomic theory [原子論]; Ausdehnungslehre [広遠論]; Theory of probability [公算論]; Postulate [公準]; Axiom [公理]; Axiomatic [公理主義]; Coordinates [座標]; Theory of economy of thought [思惟経済説]; Dimension [次元]; Quaternions [四元法]; Self-representation system [自己表現体系]; Natural science [自然科学]; Naturwissenschaftlich [自然科学的]; Natural number [自然数]; Gedankenexperiment [思想実験]; Real number [実数]; Mass [質量]; Projection [射影]; Projective geometry [射影幾何学]; Ordinal number [序数]; Number [数]; Mathematics [数学]; Mathematical [数学的]; Mathematical induction [数学的帰納法]; Mathematical formalism [数学的形式主義]; Mathematical realism [数学的実在論]; Mathematical nominalism [数学的唯名論]; Realm/Corpus of numbers [数体]; Number continuum [数連続体]; Arithmetisation [数論化]; Welt [世界]; Integral [積分]; Integer [整数]; Absolute space [絶対空間]; Absolute time [絶対時間]; Schnitt [切断]; Explanation [説明]; Exact sciences [精密科学]; Prime number [素数]; Theory of quanta [素量説]; Algebraic number [代数的数]; Field of force [力の場]; Transcendental number [超越的数]; Transfinite aggregate [超限集合]; Transfinite number [超限数]; Electromagnetic view of nature [電磁観/電磁的自然観]; Set of points [点集合]; Electron theory [電子論]; Punktmannigfaltigkeit [点複素体]; Point transformation [点変換]; Statistical mechanics [統計的力学]; Homogeneity [等質性]; Isotropy [等方性]; Intensive quantity [内包量]; First law of thermodynamics [熱力学第一法則]; Second law of thermodynamics [熱力学第二法則]; Physical theory of light [光の物理学的理論]; Differential [微分]; Differential coefficient [微分係数]; Infinitesimal method [微分法]; Differential equation [微分方程式]; Non-Euclidean geometry [非ユークリッド幾何学]; To represent [表現する]; Irreversible phenomenon [不可逆現象]; Complex number [複素数]; Negative number [負数]; Principle of conservation of matter [物質保存の原理]; Fourth state of matter [物質の第四態]; Disintegration of matter [物質変脱]; Physics [物理学]; Physical [物理的]; Invariant [不変式]; Mathesis universalis [普遍数学]; Fraction [分数]; Transformation [変換]; Variable [変数]; Parabolic space [放物線空間]; Elements at infinity [無窮遠要素]; Infinity [無限]; Irrational number [無理数]; Euclidean geometry [ユークリッド幾何学]; Rational number [有理数]; Dynamics/Mechanics [力学]; Riemann-Helmholtz geometry [リーマン・ヘルムホルツ幾何学]; Fluxion [流率]; Quantity [量]; Continuity [連続]; Lobachevsky-Bolyai geometry [ロバチェフスキィ・ボリヤイ幾何学]; Logistic/Algebra of logic [論理計算]; Vector analysis [ヴェクトル解析]
Philosophy of mathematics [数理哲学]; Methodology [方法論]

Other

English translations

Early Works (1910–1919)

Middle Work (1920–1930)

Logic of Species (1931–1945)

Later Works (1946–1962)

Secondary sources

Books and theses

Articles

Online links

References

  1. ^ a b The Editors. "Tanabe Hajime, Japanese philosopher". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved 3 July 2023. ((cite web)): |last1= has generic name (help)
  2. ^ Shaw, Kendrick. "Zen Buddhism: The Kyoto School". University at Buffalo. Retrieved June 25, 2010.
  3. ^ Davis, Bret W. (2019), "The Kyoto School", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2019 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 2020-06-24
  4. ^ Flanagan, Damian (2019-02-09). "'Philosophers of Nothingness': Philosophy built on quietly gripping human dramas". The Japan Times. Retrieved 2020-06-24.
  5. ^ Ozaki, Makoto. Introduction to the Philosophy of Tanabe. p. 1.
  6. ^ Ozaki, Makoto (2001). Individuum, Society, Humankind: The Triadic Logic of Species According to Hajime Tanabe. Leiden: BRILL. p. 2. ISBN 978-90-04-12118-8.
  7. ^ Yusa, Michiko (2002). Zen and Philosophy: An Intellectual Biography of Nishida Kitarô. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. p. 151. ISBN 978-0-8248-2459-4.
  8. ^ "科学の価値 - 国立国会図書館デジタルコレクション".
  9. ^ 田辺元記念哲学会求真会 田辺元紹介
  10. ^ 田辺元記念哲学会求真会 田辺元紹介
  11. ^ "哲学論叢. 6 - 国立国会図書館デジタルコレクション".
  12. ^ Cf. Hubbard, Jamie, 'Tanabe's Metanoetics: The Failure of Absolutism,' in Unno and Heisig, p. 362.
  13. ^ Embree, Lester (2013). Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Springer Science & Business Media. p. 368. ISBN 9789048144297.
  14. ^ Quoted in Heisig, James, 'The Self That Is Not a self,' in Unno and Heisig, p. 284.
  15. ^ Cestari, Matteo, "Between Emptiness and Absolute Nothingness: Reflections on Negation in Nishida and Buddhism," p. 323.
  16. ^ John C. Maraldo, 'Metanoetics and the Crisis of Reason: Tanabe, Nishida, and Contemporary Philosophy,' in Unno, pp. 235-255
  17. ^ Ozaki. p. 193. ((cite book)): Missing or empty |title= (help) By these terms, Ozaki paraphrases Tanabe as meaning "a synthesis of relativistic historicism and individualistic existentialism".
  18. ^ Fredericks, James, 'Philosophy as Metanoetics', in Unno and Heisig, pp. 59-60.
  19. ^ Tanabe's stance on system-building in philosophy is an open question. Heisig, for example, notes the systematic approach that Tanabe takes to philosophy. Tanabe's writings in the philosophy of science often give the appearance of identifying basic metaphysical principles which, combined with Absolute Nothingness, reveal something akin to Aristotle's axioms, the guiding archetypes for matter and thought.
  20. ^ Fredericks, pp. 65-66.
  21. ^ Laube, Johannes, "The Way of Metanoia and the Way of the Bodhisattva," in Unno and Heisig, pp. 318 and 321.
  22. ^ For critique, see Hubbard, Jamie, "Tanabe's Metanoetics: The Failure of Absolutism," in Unno and Heisig, p. 368 and pp. 374-376.
  23. ^ 「是より余が説かんとする所の科学概論といふはPhilosophy of science, Philosophie der Wissenschaftの訳語である」(CW2:159).
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